BY MARIO DUARTE
Copyright is held by the author.
After school, she skates home.
The sun stutters, uncontrollably.
“Madre, estoy en casa,” she calls
entering the shady house.
Her madre, a brown hen, wings
into her arms, cackling.
“Lávase las manos,” her madre clucks.
“OK, un momento, mama.”
Fabiola changes into shoes, washes,
sits at the dining room table
On a blue plate, a tower of sunflower
seeds topple into cornmeal.
“Bird food, again!” cries Fabiola.
Yes, her madre’s head bobs.
“Well,” Fabiola says, “I guess it’s
better than worms on Sunday.
Abruptly, her madre squawks, lays
an extra-large brown egg.
“Oh great,” Fabiola sneers, “you’ve
already found my replacement.”
“No mija,” her mother crows. “I
could never replace you. You
are more than egg song, cackling,
chick chirp, a startled squawk.”
Heads side by side they create
a single loud cluck, buzz, growl,
cry a calm, gently rising borrrrb
united in the flight of love.
Even the sun stops stuttering, despite
arrival of the sunset dragon.
***
Mario Duarte is a Mexican-American writer and an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate. His fiction and poetry have appeared in From Whispers to Roars, Jake, and Mersey Review, among others. He is the author of a poetry book, To the Death of the Author, and a short story book, My Father Called Us Monkeys.
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